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Renewables share of UK energy up, but is it all good news?

Provisional data shows that 19.2% of the UK’s electricity generation in 2014 came from renewable sources, up from 14.9% in 2013. The biggest contribution was from bioenergy (36%), followed by onshore wind (29%), offshore wind (21%), hydro (9%) and solar (6%).

Bioenergy includes landfill gas, sewage gas, anaerobic digestion (AD) of food waste and energy crops and plant biomass. This source increased significantly in 2014 due to the controversial conversion of Drax Power Station to biomass – see:

At the end of 2014, 607,000 small (<5MW) installations qualified for Feed-in Tariffs. 99% of this number were Solar PV installations, although these contributed 84% of the generation capacity from all FiT installations (small wind contributed 11%, AD 3% and hydro 2%).